To be honest this game made me quite salty at the start. Even 20 hours in and especially after the breach update I was getting ticked off at every little thing in this game. But to be honest now I find that only 30% of my previous complaints are even remotely valid. This game is so unique, stunning visual identity and environmental design, the ways the cutscenes seamlessly appear when I walk into certain areas, the feeling of achievement you get as you open up one way doors making the world feel explored and more convenient, and my eventual acceptance of the resource collecting system leading to a full inventory of good food it all works really well. The game is unlike anything I’ve ever tried but only in the little ways. It completely threw me off and that’s why I probably disliked it initially.
And that’s where my first bit of feedback lies. I understand you need to reach a large audience but seriously, it was not a great choice to sponsor big POE and ARPG streamers/youtubers. Especially the ones who clearly dislike this type of game and did not give it even the slightest chance beyond what they were paid to do (DMT seriously rage quit after an hour before getting sponsored for 2 videos wtf?!?). This marketing strategy just attracts the wrong audience of dopamine zombie POE players who are used to crying and swearing undying loyalty to their only time sink. I think that along with the unique gameplay loop is what has lead to a lot of negative steam reviews. I personally love monster hunter/dark souls/elden ring adjacent games a long with arpgs, so the adjustment was easier for me than it may be for POE only players. The main thing that is so off putting is how central the gathering and exploration is to the progression. Most games treat stuff like this as additional side content to be done occasionally which is why I personally found it boring and tedious. Maybe if there was more encouragement early I may have avoided some annoyance when I got to sacrament only to realize all of this stuff I missed was actually super important but a lot of that came from the time it takes to gather trees, ores, etc and the fact that you need a full loadout of tools. Even after when I got stuck on the huntress and ran out of food after a few attempts I felt annoyed at the fact I had to farm for more shitty 50 health food and so I put the game down for a few days. Eventually the game got me itching again so I bit the bullet and managed to actually find some good recipes and find my own enjoyable farming routes, which enabled me to have a few more effective tries at the boss with more total health pool due to the more potent food. Initially I hated the hunger system thing but now I think it adds that intentional feeling to the food management in this game. I still feel like you could reduce the max food per fight progression with plague ichor and add a way to refresh food chances during the fight. Most bosses have a key transition faze at half health or on their second health bar where you could add a couple attacks that refresh food supply when you parry them or something. Or you could add a rune that converts focus to food charges that has fast cast time as an alternative to health aura.
Back to the main topic of the core mechanics, I also think that resources could be more dense due to the in game time link, building in town should have reduced or no real world time cost and merchants should have at least a couple stock of each weapon so that you can try and enchant them without having to cheat your pc clock to find a high focus gain plagued rarity wand for example (damn that took ages and permanently messed up my realms vendor refresh). I’m glad to see the incoming changes to a lot of the problems I had with ranged/ mage builds, target farming certain materials such as fallen embers, gem removal, etc. The main things I want now are easier re-specing, photo mode (why isn’t this already in the game is so beautiful), more build variety through more attribute effects and finally the most important bit of feedback which is the rune system.
Runes in this game are super important, they make up all the utility and most of your endgame damage. But they feel very strange. A lot of enchantments restrict and enable focus use yet pretty much every build uses it so it feel weird to ever nerf it in your stats. Some weak or small utility runes have massive focus cost that aligns with the full screen wipe 5k damage massive slam runes. Even small relatively tame runes cost 50 plus focus that take full combos on enemies to use. It feels like sometimes the system is used for ultimate finishing abilites that are scarcely used and are kept between fights and only used at the right time and other times its throw away abilities that should be spammed at every fight yet you are unable to do so. Am I supposed to be using them as finishing moves once per fight? Enabling buffs at the start of a fight? Or do I save for the big 150 plague slam to one shot echo knight? Or do I just spec into infinite focus so my build can actually function how it does in every other ARPG. They are implementing a fix for the ladder but the previous complaints are still valid. Should we have to fully fight one mob with melee attacks to enable a big move on the next enemy or should we be using them to activate a situational fire trail behind me? The choice to connect all abilities to slots on a weapon and an active only mana type system is unique but not fleshed out enough to make it intuitive and as fun as it should be. There needs to be more variety to rune cost and focus generation that can only come through playtesting and balance but it definitely needs to be a focus to make this game flow as it should.
(An edit I’m adding in as I forgot)
Legendries and the loot system overall feels a bit unsatisfying. The bright purple items are only really useful endgame whereas the drops make you think they should be straight powerful upgrades. With the new embers system (which I mostly like), feels like my gear farm is just getting a plagued version of the item I want and then throwing away stacks of fallen embers to get the perfect item. Certain stats should be drop only or something to add more identity to the loot system. This may be tricky as loot drops are not common for weapons and there are a lot of them but after the target farming patch this should be dooable. I’m not talking stat ranges because that can be fixed with exalting, maybe having one or 2 stats locked per drop so at a minimum you need to hit those before rerolling the others. Legendary rings feel super build defining whereas the weapons get out scaled fast. Their stats are neither unique enough nor powerful enough to warrant their rarity and the high amount of runes they have makes the tend to feel restrictive. I don’t mind the idea of a fabled weapon used by cerims past making you use them a certain way but currently it feels unrewarding due to the power gap between them and plagued. Like I said previously if they dropped from rare bounties with cool stories about past cerims (I don’t know the lore that well this may be stupid) or fabled beasts that explain their newly overhauled unique traits and (1 to 2) exclusive runes (can’t be moved to other weapons) then the system would actually feel legendary. I also don’t mind the few rarity system as long as legendries and plagued items are slightly adjusted.
(edit) New peace of feedback, the crucible needs to be adjusted. I like the loot I think its worth your time, personally I was looking for the broken ring of determination but the bonus weapons and gems are good. Its not really difficult with a good build especially with the echoes but it is very boring. Its repetitive, the final boss isn’t particularly fun and the most dangerous part is super annoying as you only really die due to being pushed off edges. Especially with my build using frontflip kick where I have to get a good distance to the enemy so I don’t slide off them during my kick like their lubed up. Having runs end due to a weird explosion pushing me off the edge of one of the set repeated arenas on arena 9 is not fun. It’s worse because the final boss isn’t even a spectacle, its really uninteresting and tries too hard yet is still comical to some builds and too difficult for others.
To conclude this game does a lot of things right with its general unique take on typical genres and its depth already converted me into a believer, however it lacks intuitive implementation and can still feel tedious. The build variety needs more depth even though I understand the philosophy of picking an attribute and then swapping between that attributes weapons as you go along, it doesn’t work as well as I think the devs believed it would. A little more quality of life with a photo mode, etc. As well as long term goal of rune rebalance to make the combat flow and allow players to be expressive. The final big thing is communication of the games systems to the masses. Sponsor people with genuine passion, communicate the games philosophies to the bigger streamers before sponsoring, insist on the depth you’ve built so that entitled salty players like myself can break through the wall of trying to skill check every boss and braindead POE through a campaign. Keep doing what you’re doing and the people will see the quality and enjoy the fresh air that is this game.
8/10 Would play again.